Efficient Probabilistic Fatigue Analysis of a Riser Suspended and Moored by Chains

Abstract

Fatigue analysis of an offshore structure usually requires the numerical simulation of a huge number of loading cases to compute the long-term integral associated to the accumulated fatigue damage. Papadimitriou et al. [1] and Low and Cheung [2] proposed two distinct approaches to solve the long-term fatigue damage more efficiently. These methods are known as Asymptotic Approximation Method and Perturbation Method, respectively. This paper investigates the efficiency of these two methods in the fatigue analysis of the steel pipe of a riser suspended and moored by chains (RSAA). Since there is an analytical solution for the stress spectrum of this riser, both time and frequency domain fatigue assessments approaches are considered. The accuracy and computational efficiency of the aforementioned methods are compared with the “brute force” direct integration methodology.